We hear two statements from technical experts that go together, over and over, on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter if it’s with technical experts that attend our training, our 1:1 coaching clients, or our clients’ technical experts when we help out with Business Critical projects. It’s all the same.

“I don’t want to become a manager, I like being technical”

And

“I’m frustrated because nobody listens to me when it comes to solving the problems around here”

Sometimes the words we hear are a little different, but they mean the same thing:

“Are you here to help us explain what’s going on and what needs to happen to fix it?”

“They’ll listen to you because you’re consultants”

“Don’t bother trying to explain it, we already know they’re not listening…”

If you’ve followed some of our earlier blog posts, you should have an initial idea on whether or not...

Thank you for all the great feedback on Part 1 of this post, here’s Part 2!

We’ll start with a blunt statement: Managing is a hard job, and it can be a hard transition. For the vast majority, management roles are not for you. It’s not difficult because you can’t learn to do the job, the difficulty comes from the fact for many of you, that the role isn’t going to fulfill you (in practical terms, the demands of the job will be more draining than the value of any reward it gives you).

If it’s not rewarding to you, if it doesn’t motivate you regularly, then your chance of progression drops quickly. Nobody wants to start down a dead-end road that ends in frustration, or worse, burnout.

With that out of the way, we can talk about how you can move ahead. (Remember from Part 1, we talked about three of the motivators for career advancement: More decision-making freedom, more power or responsibility and more money.)

If we put the transition to...

I can't count the number of times people have come to us because they believe the only way to move up in their organization is to become a manager.

I'll start with a caveat: Some organizations, which are HR or policy dysfunctional, mandate that the promotion path for all positions leads to management. The majority of these 'management' positions manage nothing and no one. They're simply senior-level team members and specialists. The terms manager, leader, and director in those organizations have become meaningless.

So caveats and business-card-inflation aside, when people want to 'move up' or get promoted, at the basic level it's because they want:

• More decision making freedom
• More money
• More power

Assuming you are a team member, as an individual contributor and not a manager, then you have 4 paths you could pursue to get you closer to your 3 "mores" above:

• Become more focused/specialist in what you currently do
• Transition to a management role (includes project management)
• Change...